Everything Not Saved

There’s a story about a memory that’s a lie.

There’s a feeling about a memory that’s true.

The story about the memory is in language.

The feeling about the memory is incommunicable.

The memory can only be the story of the memory.

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There are a whole bunch of things I can’t remember about this show – I cannot remember exactly what I thought it was about beforehand, I cannot remember when I first saw the three actors together onstage, I cannot remember what I thought their accents were before they turned out to be Irish, I cannot remember whether the set was on the floor or raised, I cannot remember what they were wearing for most of the show, I cannot remember what order the show happened in, or who the characters exactly were and when. There is so much to remember and I remember so little.

This is a show about memory, but not about nostalgia. It is a sequence of scenes between different characters but which build and chime and flux around each other, so that you are given a clear image of an idea of memory, of cultural memory and how it relates to personal memory – of how our idea of the space landings, or Charlemagne, or the Egyptians, or Diana, or Rasputin, is little more than the traces of someone else’s facts heard through an echo-chamber – we know the name Diana and her face and her death and we know the queen’s relation to her and we have photograph’s but she has become an artefact that we all agree happened, but to which we have little idea what we are agreeing upon.

There is so much to remember and the faults in our memory, the show seems to suggest, are the faults in our consciousness and the faults in our culture – if only we could remember, we could comprehend, and we could blame. If only we could remember, we could be clear.

All this makes it sound serious, which it isn’t – there’s a brilliant sequence of three people wearing idiotic costumes and falling around pretending to die and the last ten minutes is some of the most mouth-agape watching I’ve ever done in a theatre – and the performances are electrifying, like three people simultaneously acting a character and showing the cracks in their character at the same time, and the staging allows for these terrific, balletic, soaring monologues to just rear up without any fanfare and generate a sort of static in the room, and then melt away without you having a chance to get to grips with what’s going on.

It moves at such a pace I found myself completely confounded and amazed. It’s completely magical. Smart and deep and spectacular and it was so exactly what I wanted to see at the Fringe. I know Lyn is annoyed that she hasn’t found her five star show yet – I have very little sympathy, as it seems to me completely obvious that if you start with co-productions at the Traverse and slowly wander back to these frankly starving companies at Zoo, you are unlikely to feel like you’ve entered the halcyon days of theatre culture, but whatever, maybe last year was a real feast – but by the by, this was so it. My perfect Edinburgh show. So careful and generous and fully-formed.

I really really really loved it.

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